you can remodel the house, but you can't add the view

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As part of our post-catch up, I found this draft of a post about the custom cabinet in our master bathroom remodel. I’m embarrassed to say that has lived in draft land for two years now. I’m publishing it now in a post of few words. Because the pictures are awesome.

One of the most rewarding parts of the bathroom remodeling experiences has been a chance to have something special custom made. Seeing our own design realized by a craftsman is a the antidote to our typical mass-market Ikea experience of buy-assemble-repeat.

So, it’s been a while since the bathroom posts. We’ve been pretty busy with life of course. And with the new baby on the way in about a month, we’ve been working on her room. The green balcony guest room is now the purple – or should I say “ice grape” – nursery. I’ve been busy painting, putting up a new lighting fixtures & fan, and still have some minor things to do, and Cristina’s been busy sewing! So, it’s almost ready for pictures..but here’s a sneak peek.

I must add that our front garden is looking pretty smashing as well so we’ll have to post some photos of that as well 🙂

Well, it’s official. With our cabinet maker coming by today to install the knobs and pulls on the vanity, the bathroom is officially 99% complete. Still need to do final inspection and hang the chandelier – in that order 😉 – but otherwise it’s ready!

Needless to say, we are super thrilled with the results. Everything came together in the end and even the shower door opens – we were concerned for a while whether there wouldn’t be enough space between the shower and the toilet for the glass door to swing out – I guess we should’ve trusted the contractor, he was right.

Of course there are a million things we can pick apart and notice, but that’s the difference between a design and the real thing, the real thing will have imperfections! But, we can step back and look at the end results as a whole and be proud of this little piece of improvement we have made to our home.

Here are the photos:

Here’s the entrance to our new master bathroom. We changed the single door to a french door (with frosted privacy glass) to give the bathroom a more open feel. After a lot of searching, we ended up ordering the doors from Ashby Lumber. It took 3-4 weeks since they were coming from Canada. Never knew how hard it is to get doors!

Here’s our custom floating vanity in walnut with restoration hardware pulls. The vanity was designed by Kane and made by a wonderful cabinet maker – Jesus Espinoza – of Espinoza Cabinets. It was a joy working with him and his work is affordable and exceptionally crafted. Kane got a thrill out of driving into the heart of Richmond to Jesus’ shop! The Hansgrohe focus s bathroom faucets were purchased from http://www.qualitybath.com and the Botticini Marble counter top was purchased from http://www.intertile.com and fabricated and installed by http://www.sullivancountertops.com.

View of vanity, toilet, and custom glass shower enclosure. The medicine cabinets were purchased from restoration hardware. They are mirrored on both sides of the doors and in the back. We initially bought some from Home Depot – but the online reviews were so bad, we took them back. The butterfly is from one of our favorite stores, the bone room! The KOHLER Santa Rosa Toilet was purchased at the home depot.

These are the custom wooden floating shelves our cabinet maker created for us. Walnut veneer. Initially we were only going to have him make the cabinet and we didn’t know what we were going to do about the shelves, but then I asked if he could make them and the matching tub curtain, and his response was, “sure” The guy is pretty cool.

Custom vanity in walnut with restoration hardware Spritz knobs and pulls. Jesus came to the house to put the hardware on, we weren’t about to let just anyone drill into this beautiful wood.

Custom vanity in walnut with restoration hardware pulls. The doors have soft close hinges so they glide into place. And the vanity is made of plywood inside – as opposed to particle board – which makes a huge difference on how it feels.

This awesome hansgrohe 27160 rain dance shower faucet with thermostat and hand shower was purchased from http://www.qualitybath.com (which is a great site for well priced high end fixtures.)

We added vertical niches in the shower and tub area. The skylight is from home depot and the custom glass shower door is from Schikcer Shower Doors. http://schickershowerdoors.com/

This awesome hansgrohe rainshower is great. And the skylight brings in natural light. We saved a lot by going with a stock cream tile from intertile.

It’s definitely nice to stand under this rainshower with the natural light spilling in from the skylight – it’s like your standing in the rain in the tropics.

We cut a hole in the wall to put in a picture window in the bathroom. We still need to figure out what we are going to do about the window dressing, but for now we’re hoping that our neighbors aren’t watching 🙂

The niches in the tub and shower are tiled with BlueTooth Olive Porcelain from intertile. (the grout on these is a bit messy, but we’ll see if we can clean it up)

We ended up with a jetted tub – the American Standard EverClean 5 ft. Whirlpool Tub from Home Depot – after Kane accidentally ordered the wrong tub online initially. Haven’t used it yet, but tested the jets and they worked great. The hansgrohe focus roman tub filler faucet with diverter, was purchased from http://www.qualitybath.com – initially the diverter knob was lost/missing, but our contractor Dan Dragomir found the replacement and now it works!

This is one of my favorite parts. The cabinet maker also made us a tub curtain from a piece of walnut veneer, it’s just beautiful.

Measure twice, cut once, right? Or in the case of a big slab of marble, measure many times. And use lot of blue tape. Because blue tape brings certainty to all things.

About a week ago I went out to the counter warehouse to approve the cutting plan for our creamy slab of Botticini marble. Botticini — the name alone conjures up visions of italian fountains and rustic yet elegant cuisine. We had purchased a single slab to provide the raw material for our counter, sink backsplash, tub deck, and shower bench in our master bathroom. Mapping out a cutting plan for this slab was a job for some experts. Continue reading →

Up until recently the bathroom remodel has been a dirty project — an unpolished story of demolition and rough carpentry and drywall dust. But all that framing, plumbing, and electrical was never meant to be seen. On the other hand, the next step is very much about surface appearance. With the guts of the room pretty much operational, it’s time to bring on the pretty part.

Almost three months ago we posted a sneak peak of our tile palette. Are you ready to see these tiles in action? Caveat: tiling is still a work in progress — we are waiting on many of our grout colors and the final edging rows of wall tile cannot be cut until the marble surfaces are in place. But even in this incomplete state the tile has dramatically transformed what was a construction zone into a room we can imagine relaxing in.

Color is in some ways the simplest of fixes. On the many home buying shows that we used to watch, someone invariably walks into a home and declares “I don’t like the color” as if that is the sole criteria by which a space should be judged. Not the location or layout or any of a million things difficult to change, but color. Something that a gallon of paint can remedy.

So color is easy, in theory. Except that you have to pick the color. And that’s kind of nerve wracking. Especially on short notice.Continue reading →

Remember all those pasts blog posts, oh, about two and a half years ago, detailing the creation of our perfect nursery? Well the little one has gone and grown up and developed opinions and taste of his own (although we are proud to say that he finds it important to match the color of his socks to his the rest of his clothing. We managed to not produce a design disaster — although who knows what the teenage years may bring).

In the intervening two years our thematically cohesive nursery has become a bit jumbled. The final blow landed this week, when in our effort to move the big boy into his own bed we enlisted that most convincing of commercial entities, Thomas the Tank Engine.